Progressive rock sucks

Progressive rock sucks.

Have any prog rock fans considered cultural signifigance when picking their greatest favorite bands? None of the albums progressive rock band have made even the slightest impact on music.

Yes is no Beatles. Rick Wakeman is no Carl Perkins. Bad Religion is no Rolling Stones. The fact that some people even mention the likes of Incubus and Smashing Pumpkins in debates over great rock bands have got me scratching my head here. And then there's the slowtards naming modern post-hardcore albums as the GREATEST EVER. Un-fuckin-believable.

Let me put it in terms you nerds can understand. Mario is, without a doubt, the greatest video game character ever. Why? Because of his impact on the culture. Scrooge McDuck may be way cool, but Ducktales didn't start a phenomenon.

Learn your Rock N Roll history.

alright Sup Forums you have 30 seconds to say what ice cream flavor is objectively the best, go.

>Prog fans

Can't. Take. The. Heat.

Vanilla

Real punk bands have had more impact on world culture than any other kind of music, like with the Stooges

Before 1968 there was no real RAW rock n roll. The Stooges did that. Really, the Stooges came from almost nothing. You can hear the early rock influence, but nobody ever took it to such an extreme. These guys were bent on having the most fucked up rock group in history, but they did so in a completely uncalculated way. There was no planning or posturing. This was the world's first real artistic band. This is the antithesis of progressive rock. No bs intellectualism, just pure emotion. Lustful, angry, and stupid. Ugly as sin, but sexy as hell. This band is real.

The Stooges make the Who look like Danny and the Juniors. They brought about an entirely differant form of expression in music. One that's taken for granted now. Without the Stooges, punk rock wouldn't exist. Every member of the Ramones has made it clear that their biggest influences were the Stooges and the New York Dolls. Their influence is undeniable on great music.

And these are stated as facts because they are indeed facts. Get yourself some Stooges records and you'll understand where the rawness that spawned punk rock originally comes from.

i can't even begin to describe how shit chuck berry and little richard are compared to king crimson and genesis

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All I know that he's involved in the early punk rock scence

Cultural impact in popular music, or anything else, isn't necessarily conducive to quality.

ext to Henry Cow, this durable (and variable) German contingent is art-rock's most genuinely avant-garde band, adapting Stockhausen and Coleman to rock rhythms and sonorities in a way that is usually interesting if rarely (in my experience) compelling. All this and their own studio in Cologne without touching the American market or gaining any reliable American distribution. The almighty Deutschmark.

I bet the faggot likes more sporkcore like cardiacs too

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Periodically, about once a year, I confess my continued fondness for jazz. I say confess because it invariably happens that after I do people who know--they always know, these people: so sure of themselves!--that jazz is Better than rock, instead of assuming (as they ordinarily do) that I am an ignoramus, which doesn't bother me much, assume for a while that I am a hype-ocrite, which does. The question being: having heard the light, Mr. Critic, having felt the dazzling vibrations of Tony Williams and thrilled to the brilliant sonorities of Pharoah Sanders, why do you continue to push that second-rate shit? I could offer some snotty reply--for cheap money and fleeting fame--but that would only serve to obscure the not especially shameful truth, which is that I don't write about jazz because I don't have much to say about it. I agree that a lot of rock is second-rate shit, especially semi-improvised rock, and I'm sure my dissatisfaction is a function of prolonged exposure to melodic improvisers like Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk, not to mention rhythmists like Paul Chambers and Charlie Haden and Elvin Jones. But although I have the faith in my own taste that is everybody's birthright, I believe I like the jazz I do for technical reasons that are beyond my ability to comprehend concretely or specifically and hence express, having to do with polyrhythms and harmonics a writer as knowledgeable as Whitney Balliett, the New Yorker's catholic and eloquent jazz critic, is hard-pressed to render. Rock has its own complexities, but these occur largely on a social level which any intelligent observer can get at. Jazz is mostly music.

vanilla is king shit of fuck mountain of ice cream flavours

I like music sometimes, however, and even during my most apostate pro-rock periods I have returned to jazz occasionally--once a month, say--when I felt in need of something a little subtler than my usual meat and brown rice, and over the past six months it has become regular fare again, for the first time in five or six years. Two lps, both featuring drummer Tony Williams, helped me get back: Miles Davis's In a Silent Way and Williams's own Emergency! These records diverge in feeling and intent--the former pretends to be background music, almost in the manner of Sketches of Spain, which in 1960 catapulted Davis into the favor of the kind of man who reads Playboy and initiated in me one phase of the disillusionment with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll, while the latter is a frank extrapolation on the most raucous qualities of new thing jazz and wah-wah mannerist rock--but after repeated listenings at all levels of consciousness I came to feel they shared traits which I could relate to rock and which boded well for jazz. Well, maybe and maybe not: now each man has come out with a second lp, and I'm sorry to report that while I like these records, I'm not absolutely sure those of you who have no predilection for jazz will find them very beguiling.

Where I differ with all those Better Than folks is that I don't think it's anyone's responsibility to try. To hell with evangelism. Just as I can believe Homer is groovy in the original without feeling any inclination to learn Greek, I know it's quite possible to lead a rich and enlightened life without getting into jazz--or any other music, for that matter. Despite my jazz experience, it took me a long time to begin digging Davis's new one, Bitches Brew, and I didn't turn on to Williams's Turn It Over right away, either. Disinterested friends seem less excited by these lps than by their predecessors and records do cost money, so I'm hesitant to make unequivocal recommendations. On the other hand, you all like rock, and I suspect that for many of you these albums--not to mention In a Silent Way and Emergency!--will be worth some work. In fact, I'm sure of it.

sporkcore hardly describes either band

The most common jazz/rock synthesis attaches a heavy (-handed) beat to big-band vital arrangements and fills it out with insulting-cum-uninteresting solo rip-offs on John Coltrane/Don Cherry/Roswell Rudd. This approach is synthetic and second-hand, but it does counteract the rhythmic super-sophistication and non-existent singing which are clearly two reasons for the decline of jazz. The solos, of course, are another matter, the usual self-indulgence by unoriginal musicians, but since the same is true of all those mediocre but successful rock guitarists and organists, that doesn't explain why only one band, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, has achieved major commercial (never mind artistic) success with this formula. I suspect the success of BS&T, admittedly the most facile if not the most energetic of rock's "big bands"--overlooking the Mothers, who however vain their pretensions do create their own category--is due as much to gimmick value as to musical virtuosity. I have nothing against gimmicks, but I do suspect that one reason this one hasn't had more general success is that rock audiences are not fully comfortable with horns, especially solo horns. Rock is not only big-beat music and vocal music, it is electric music, and rock fans crave the decibels and distortion that implies whether they know it or not. Davis (implicitly) and Williams (explicitly) recognize this.

High-volume electronic distortion is one of the few rock usages that hasn't been stolen, or "borrowed" from black music. Black musicians like B.B. King and Jimmy Smith can be credited with electronic innovations, but at least at their inception these always approximated acoustic effects. It wasn't until the Yardbird rave-up and the Who destructo and psychedelic feedback and noise boxes that amplifiers were loved for themselves. So it is significant that both Williams and Davis employ the same white English guitarist, John McLaughlin, who tours and records with Williams and also appears on In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. McLaughlin is known as a jazz musician in England but came to be associated with the English demi-Janis, Jools Driscoll, in the States. Symbolically, he straddles jazz and pop (though that isn't why Davis and Williams use him: they use him because he's one of the best guitarists in the world) and the breadth of his playing--from the most percussive and arbitrary amp stuff to straight blues and jazz improvisation, though, as a young black musician remarked to me recently, he does tend to be a little abstract even when he's trying to be funky--is an indicator (and probably a determinant) of the kind of jazz Davis and Williams are making. This is not to imply that Davis and Williams are into the same thing, only that each is trying to solve the same problem in his own way, and that the solutions share a key element: electronics.

Davis's concentration on electric instruments (the new lp also features Joe Zawinul and Chick Corea on electric piano and rock session man Harvey Brooks on Fender bass) is one more step in the continuing evolution of the most protean figure in jazz history. Only Coleman Hawkins (who began as a big-band saxophonist and ended playing creditable new-thing jazz) ever went through as many changes as Miles (who dates back to bebop and has been through everything since) without surrendering his own voice, and Miles has done it with an important difference: he is a commercial business. His records and concerts reach what is probably the largest audience any serious jazzman has had since the 30s. Miles is coy about this. He explains his switch to electronics not in terms of public appeal but of audibility--call it the conceit of the amplifier--and passes off his recent appearances at the Fillmores East and West as a favor to Clive Davis. This is all no doubt true. Certainly, Miles's own tone is almost as understated as ever, anything but "rock-oriented," and the other horn men on Bitches Brew--especially Wayne Shorter on soprano sax, Benny Maupin's bass clarinet does sound passing weird--also work, tonally, in a recognizable jazz context. Nevertheless, the new music would seem to be far more accessible to the rock-trained listener than that which preceded it. As I hear it, there is something new (or new/old) going on rhythmically in both of Davis's most recent lps, a kind of compelling drive provided not by the drummers (it is some kind of tribute to Williams that Davis has seen fit to replace him with three percussionists on Bitches Brew) but by repeated melodic riffs. This is especially true of the modal tune (I think that's what Miles said it was) around which the "Shhh/Peaceful" side of "In a Silent Way" is structured.

It is less true of a forthcoming album tentatively entitled Zonked. Davis will continue to go his own way, one of the few admirable (because he is almost completely above snobbishness) examples of intelligent artistic integrity available to us. I think a few adventurous rock fans would be well-advised to try and trail behind.

Philosophically, Tony Williams is a somewhat different case. Williams, as precocious as the old man himself, started drumming for Davis when he was 17. He is now 24, having left Davis over a year ago in a personal squabble since patched over. Williams is such an overwhelming musician that if he weren't black he would demolish the reputation of a speedy super-freak like Ginger Baker almost instantly, and I think he can do it anyway. He is a true contemporary. He admires Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix, black men who have conquered the white audience, mostly for their intensity but also for their outreach. He would love to keep 20,000 people on their feet for two hours, and without Sly's heavy (and white) beat, but if he digs the sheer clamoring presence of rock he also digs the longevity of a genius like Miles. He calls his group the Tony Williams Lifetime, and his ambition is to combine the Hendrix impact with the Davis integrity. He never wants to be where Hendrix finds himself now, on tour with music three years old because that's all his fans want to hear. He wants to take the fans along with him for a decade, or two.

The Lifetime was originally a trio--Williams, McLaughlin, and Larry Young, whose jarring, unromantic energy is especially remarkable because he plays organ, which most musicians find as irresistible as a titty magazine. Recently, the three have been joined by Jack Bruce, who tours with the group and plays on Turn It Over. Promoters like to make Bruce the headliner. To my crass mind that seems like just the come-on to seduce all the Ginger Baker fans, but Williams figures that in the long run it's better to leave his own name on top. It's also more accurate. Bruce has a lot to learn before he can play with the others, although he does add a vocalist. Up until now Williams has been the group's voice man, speaking quavering, enigmatic lines that work well musically--easing the rush in an attractive counterpoint--but not lyrically, and it would be interesting to hear what the group might do with traditional song structures.

The Lifetime achieves what Williams intends--there is no more intense music anywhere. But it should be added that this intensity is of a peculiar type, sometimes more compelling aurally than physically. Perhaps it is misleading to report that after hearing Turn It Over a few times I played Led Zeppelin II and felt something of the same effect, infinitely more cumbrous and stupid but similar nevetheless. Of course, John Bonham insists on his solo, breaking the mood in the most stultifying way imaginable, while Williams, who could probably play Bonham's solo with one hand, just keeps on rocking, improvising all the time like any good jazz drummer but not afraid to play a simpler beat than is ordinarily respectable among jazz purists. There is also a good deal of the rhythmic riffing I noted in Davis's new music, more so on Emergency! than on Turn It Over.

When Young, McLaughlin, and Williams are featured, the music has a remarkably uniform texture--not that it is smooth, just that there is no way of distinguishing between front and back or melody and rhythm. The result is a collective improvisation that almost rocks.

Williams refuses to refer to his music as jazz. Jazz bores him, even the jazz he likes: it's all too quiet, too conventional, too--can it be?--commercial. So call the Tony Williams Lifetime an "electric music quartet." I think the group might just make it, if not to Sly Stone heights then further than any music of such ambitious self-dedication has gone before, and if it does it will be because Williams doesn't worry about what he's Better Than. A few months ago I attended a concert at the Fillmore that featured Jack Bruce and Mountain. Bruce was with Larry Coryell, who I then considered the finest guitarist in this creation (that excluded Jerry Garcia, who isn't human except when the fancy strikes him); Mitch Mitchell, Hendrix's old/new drummer; and a nondescript organist with zippy credentials named, if I remember, Mike Mandel. I was expecting quite a bit from this group, and I was brought down. Oh, Coryell got in some unbelievable licks, and Bruce was pretty fluid, but Mitchell wasn't equal to the music and Mandel was another jerk-off. They played what amounted to half a dozen rather lengthy rave-ups--much Better Than that, I suppose, but I couldn't listen.

...

Then Mountain came on. We all know Mountain is a hype, the original Cremora, Leslie West never made up a line in his life, Pappalardi's a freak, and who are the other two anyway? Well, they were great. They were great because they were good to look at--the famous skinny/fat counterpoint of Felix and Leslie--and because they knew how to pace a set, hard ones and soft ones and originals and golden oldies, and because Pappalardi lays down a nice bass line and Corky Laing, that's the drummer, keeps a beat. He also takes a solo, but I don't feel obliged to sit through those any more. I left well-satisfied.

You tell me which of those groups was Better. And then I'll tell you that Tony Williams and Miles Davis, if you just give your ears and your head some time, are Just as Good--because they're dramatic and intelligent and they put on their own show. They also happen to play good music that's very much like jazz and something like rock. That's their privilege, and my pleasure.

Lol stopped reading after the 2nd sentence.
>who is MC5

> Pictures from an Exhibition [Cotillion, 1972]
This cover version of Moussorgsky's mouldy oldie does have a big new beat, but you can't dance to it, and the instrumentation seems a bit spare. Anyway, the truth is that I don't even listen to the original much. D+

>Atom Heart Mother [Harvest, 1970]
Believe it or not, the, er, suite on the first side is easier to take than the, gawd, songs on the second. Yeah, they do leave the singing to an anonymous semi-classical chorus, and yeah, they probably did get the horns for the fanfares at the same hiring hall. But at least the suite provides a few of the hypnotic melodies that made Ummagumma such an admirable record to fall asleep to. D+

>Close to the Edge [Atlantic, 1972]
What a waste. They come up with a refrain that sums up everything they do--"I get up I get down"--and apply it only to their ostensible theme, which is the "seasons of man" or something like that. They segue effortlessly from Bach to harpsichord to bluesy rock and roll and don't mean to be funny. Conclusion: At the level of attention they deserve they're a one-idea group. Especially with Jon and Rick up front. C+

I think technical prog is kind of boring but King Crimson is pretty good.

Mostly I like Psych prog like Can and Ash Ra Tempel.

I find Yes, Genesis, and Pink Floyd pretty boring though.

Not prog but

>Once in a Lifetime [Sire/Warner Bros./Rhino, 2003]
Most pretentious objet de rock ever. Unique 5-x-17-inch design, suitable for storage with spare lumber, assures that the appreciations by Rick Moody, Mary Gaitskill, Maggie Estep, Dick Hebdige, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, and last but not least David Fricke will come loose if you dare read them. Illustrations include lovely water-colory thing of young teenager with severed penis. Fourth disc a DVD. Third disc loaded with True Stories and Naked, which I once thought overrated. I was wrong. They sucked. C

It is literally impossible to parody this man's pretentiousness.

>In the Court of the Crimson King [Atlantic, 1969]
The plus is because Peter Townshend likes it. This can also be said of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Beware the forthcoming hype--this is ersatz shit. D+

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>Nursery Cryme [Charisma, 1971]
God's wounds! It's a "rock" version of the myth of Hermaphroditus! In quotes cos the organist and the (mime-influenced) vocalist have the drummer a little confused! Or maybe it's just the invocation to Old King Cole! C-

>Can: Next to Henry Cow, this durable (and variable) German contingent is art-rock's most genuinely avant-garde band, adapting Stockhausen and Coleman to rock rhythms and sonorities in a way that is usually interesting if rarely (in my experience) compelling. All this and their own studio in Cologne without touching the American market or gaining any reliable American distribution. The almighty Deutschmark.

Argumentum ad populum

>Magma
>An art-rock band with its own mythology--big deal. But these guys have also made up their own language. One night when I was painting my auxiliary record shelves I put on Attahk and started laughing out loud. I'm told Attahk is one of the fast ones, though.

>Nick Drake
I'm not inclined to revere suicides. But Drake's jazzy folk-pop is admired by a lot of people who have no use for Kenny Rankin, and I prefer to leave open the possibility that he's yet another English mystic (romantic?) I'm too set in my ways to hear.

>A Farewell to Kings [Mercury, 1977]
The most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit. Not to be confused with Mahogany Rush, who at least spare us the reactionary gentility. More like Angel. Or Kansas. Or a power-trio Uriah Heep, with vocals revved up an octave. Or two. D

>Yes
>Boring
Close to the Edge, Fragile, and the Yes Album are fun as hell

>Red [Atlantic, 1974]
Grand, powerful, grating, and surprisingly lyrical, with words that cast aspersions on NYC (violence you know) and make me like it, or at least not hate it (virtually a first for the Crims), this does for classical-rock fusion what John McLaughlin's Devotion did for jazz-rock fusion. The secret as usual is that Robert Fripp is playing more--he does remind me of McLaughlin, too, though he prefers to glide where McLaughlin beats his wings. In compensation, Bill Bruford supplies more action than Buddy Miles. Less soul, though--which is why the jazz-rock fusion is more exciting. A-

>Fragile

Honestly besides like 3-4 tracks on it im pretty sure its the kind of album that people who hate prog would vilify considering the terrible filler on it.

Anyone who hates The Yes Album or Close to the Edge are literal poseurs though.

>Thick as a Brick [Reprise, 1972]
Ian Anderson is the type of guy who'll tell you on one album that a whole side is one theme and then tell you on the next that the whole album is one song. The usual shit--rock (getting heavier), folk (getting feyer), classical (getting schlockier), flute (getting better because it has no choice), words. C-

>Pieces of Eight [A&M, 1978]
>Wanna know why Starcastle is heavying it up? 'Cause they wanna go platinum, like Styx. Fortunately, Starcastle hasn't gotten to the cathedral organ yet. C-

What the hell? This one doesn't even review the album it's talking about. He doesn't give a crap, does he?

>Third [Columbia, 1970]
Robert Wyatt's light touch imbues these pleasant experiments with their own unique pulse, but only because the music is labeled rock is it hailed as a breakthrough. It does qualify as a change of pace--on the group's last album three musicians put seventeen titles on two sides, while on this one eight musicians put four on four. But though Mike Ratledge's "Out-Bloody-Rageous," to choose the most interesting example, brings together convincing approximations of Terry Riley-style modular pianistics and John Coltrane-style modal sax (Hugh Hopper has Jimmy Garrison's bass down perfect), Riley and Coltrane do it better. Only Wyatt's "Moon in June" is eccentric by the standards of its influences--which must be why it's hard to name them all. B

>posting a review from a guy that probably hates whatever your favorite album is.

Just go look up his reviews. He seems to have a real problem giving anything genuinely experimental any chance unless it has already been legitimized in some way before he reviews it.

I'm sorry, man. I'm just not impressed by masturbatory complexity or the difficulty of playing something.

It's all about the sound for me. I either think it sounds interesting or it doesn't.

What the fuck, he praised Remain in Light and their other early work. Why the sudden change of heart?

>filler tracks
Im sorry if you or anyone else doesn't like Brahms for cans and that other stuff but I like it quite nicely. In fact, Roundabout is great, but some of the other full tracks on the album are boring (relatively speaking) because they don't build into one another like CttE. The 'filler' is nice break of pace for me, it makes the album better than if a couple mediocre 5 minute pieces were thrown in there.

>De-Loused in the Comatorium [Universal, 2003]
The most unrepentantly prog band to break in years began when Puerto Rico-born guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Mexican American vocalist Cedric Bixler Zavala rejected At the Drive-In's post-hardcore strictures, with Rodriguez citing salsa as a crucial influence. But his guitar montunos aren't salsa any more than Jon Theodore's Haiti-inflected heavy-muscle drumming is vodun. Salsa requires a groove, which the old people know embodies the community to which each individual is subordinate--such as At the Drive-In's forward thrash, which subsumes the complex songforms and explosive guitar from which the Mars Volta audibly proceed. In the case of Rodriguez's phrases and noises, romantic individualism has its uses. But Bixler's highfalutin inanities--the imagined dreamlife of a suicidal artist, all clotted surrealism and Geddy Lee theatrics--need whatever subordination they can get. C+

You're right, he doesn't even try and he uses cynicism to make it seem like he knows that he's talking about (im sure he thinks he does but he certainly doesn't try) that being said its a consumer review

He just hates True Stories and Naked now.

I dunno, Cans and Brahms is ok, Mood is nice, and Fish is great (i'm probably biased because Squire is my favorite member of the band), but We Have Heaven and Five Per Cent for Nothing don't click with me too much and I can somewhat sympathize with those who dismiss the album as a cohesive piece because of it.

>not about the masturbatory complexity
clearly YOU'RE the one who hears "difficulty of playing something" in it rather than the it being interesting or beautiful. The basslines on Fragile are fantastic, the songwriting on The Yes Album is great, and the epic building and movement of CttE is incredible and moving. My least favorite part is the wanking in CttE, other than that there is very little of what you're describing in the other 2 albums (the rest of the 70s and 80s yes discography is guilty of it though, that and mediocrity

>posting a review from a guy that probably hates whatever your favorite album is.
B-but, Tago Mago is my favorite album.

fair enough, We have Heaven is my favorite track on Fragile which is my 2nd favorite Yes Album, lol, that being said MPP is my favorite Anco album and We Have Heaven sounds like its ripped stragiht from an Anco release

>Peter Gabriel [Atco, 1977]
Even when he was Genesis, Gabriel seemed smarter than your average art-rocker. Though the music was mannered, there was substance beneath its intricacy; however received the lyrical ideas, they were easier to test empirically than evocations of spaceships on Atlantis. This solo album seems a lot smarter than that. But every time I delve beneath its challenging textures to decipher a line or two I come up a little short. B+

Mint chocolate chip.

The objectively correct answer

>Turbular Bells [Virgin, 1974]
A musician with the technique and formal imagination of Terry Riley or Philip Glass can create electronic keyboard meditations worthy of hokey adjectives like "mysterious" or "majestic." The best I can come up with here is "pleasant" and "catchy." Oldfield isn't Richard Strauss or even Leonard Cohen--this is a soundtrack because that's the level at which he operates. C+

>Lateralus [Volcano, 2001]
What am I supposed to say about the latest in meaning-mongering for the fantasy fiction set? That they are not as good as King Crimson? That I do not like my Billy Cobham comp even less? That this is not progress? That I am not a virgin? All of the above. Plus I never liked Crimson much to begin with. C

I mean, man. You don't need to take offense from it. Yeah, I used "masturbatory" which is a bit disparaging but seriously. I just don't like yes. There's no more to it than that. I just don't find anything they're doing interesting.

I mean, he definitely isn't the biggest fan of Can. Obviously he didn't review many of their albums but you get the sense from what he's written about them that he thinks they are more an interesting oddity than actual musicians.

I think his tastes are actually pretty limited and he seems to be aware of this as well. He's comment on his own prejudices before. He's a pretty sane dude. People just need to learn not to take what he says as gold.

> Vespertine [Elektra, 2001]
I liked this a lot better once I heard how it was entirely about sex, which since it often buries its pulse took a while. Sex, not fucking. I'm nervous so you'd better pet me awhile sex. Lick the backs of my knees sex. OK, where my buttcheeks join my thighs sex. I'm still a little jumpy so you'd better pet me some more sex. How many different ways can we open our mouths together sex. We came 20 minutes ago and have Sunday morning ahead of us sex. Or, if fucking, tantric--the one where you don't move and let vaginal peristalsis do the work (yeah sure). The atmospherics, glitch techno, harps, glockenspiels, and shades of Hilmar Om Hilmarsson float free sometimes, and when she gets all soprano on your ass you could accuse her of spirituality. But with somebody this freaky you could get used to that. English lyrics provided, most of them dirty if you want. A-

>Black Sabbath: Paranoid (Warner Bros., 1970) >They do take heavy to undreamt-of extremes, and I suppose I could enjoy them as camp, like a horror movie--the title cut is definitely screamworthy. After all, their audience can't take that Lucifer bit seriously, right? Well, depends on what you mean by serious. Personally, I've always suspected that horror movies catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place. C-
>catharsized stuff I was too rational to care about in the first place.
>too rational to care about
You fedoras can go stuff it. This guy was euphoric way before you.

>Songs About Fucking [Touch and Go, 1987]
Anybody who thinks rock and roll is alive and well in the infinite variety of its garage-boy permutations had better figure out how these Hitler Youth rejects could crush the competition and quit simultaneously. No matter what well-meaning rockers think of Steve Albini's supremacist lies, they lie themselves if they dismiss what he does with electric guitars--that killdozer sound culminates if not finishes off whole generations of punk and metal. In this farewell version it gains just enough clarity and momentum to make its inhumanity ineluctable, and the absence of lyrics that betray Albini's roots in yellow journalism reinforces an illusion of depth--these are hateful and sometimes hackneyed, sure, but never sucker fare like "Jordan, Minnesota." A-

just a classic chocolate but i respect everyones opinion :)

>Have any prog rock fans considered cultural signifigance when picking their greatest favorite bands?
No because I'm a person, not a sentient zeitgeist. I choose favourites based on what I enjoy, not what the general populace likes.

Often popularity and critical acclaim is indicative of quality but it's a stupid reason by itself to say you love a band.

It's Styx. They deserved it.

>Nevermind [Geffen, 1991]
For years, the Seattle scene produced noise fragments that occasionally assumed song form on singles no normal person ever heard, until now. This is what hard rock was generally understood to be before metal moved in. They make it all sound so simple too, and the biggest shame is that the lesson will all be forgotten again in a few years. A-

>The Ramones [Sire, 1976]
"I love, love, love this record. They're clean the way the Velvets weren't, sprightly the way the Dolls weren't, and just plain listenable like Black Sabbath never were. The Nazi references do make me slightly uneasy, but then it's always been my theory that good rock-and-roll had damn well better make you uneasy. Not that these boys condone any nasties, mind you, they merely suggest that their music has some ominous sources and they tap into them. And I hear it cost $6400 to put it on plastic. A"

>Californication [Warner Bros., 1999]

New Age fuck fiends ("Purple Stain", "Scar Tissue" **)

>They make it all sound so simple too, and the biggest shame is that the lesson will all be forgotten again in a few years.
He was right desu

>Black Sabbath [Warner Bros., 1970]
All the worst excesses of the counterculture on a plastic platter: drug-impaired reaction times, lengthy solos, bullshit necromancy. They claim to oppose war, but if I don't believe in loving my enemies, then I don't believe in loving my allies either and I've feared something like this would happen ever since I first saw a numerology column in an underground newspaper. D+

>Pyromania [Mercury, 1983]
Fuckin' right new heavy metal is different from old heavy metal. The new stuff is about five silly beats per minute faster. And the "new" metal singers all sound free, white, and more-or-less twenty one. C+

>and just plain listenable like Black Sabbath never were

Huh?

>Face Dances [Warner Bros., 1981]

"Keith Moon's death appears to have unburdened Pete Townshend of his obsession with mortality and the band he created. His new sex songs are stylish and passionate, the strongest he's written in a decade. Too bad they sound forced coming from the aging pretty boy who mouthpieces them, all of which is a reminder that mortality catches up with pretty boys faster than the rest of us. B-"

>It's Hard [Warner Bros., 1982]

"For years, Pete Townshend's operatic pretensions were so transparent that I wagered his musical ideas would never catch up to his lyrics. And they didn't; both became more prolix at the same rate. Between the synthesizers, long-winded song structures, and book club poetry, this may be the nearest thing to classic awful English art rock since Genesis discovered funk. Best track? Eminence Front, in which Pete discovers funk. Just in time. Bye. C"

bump, lurker here, thats all for them reviews?

>Follow The Leader [Epic, 1998]

"Korn insist they're not metal; that's Judas Priest, all 4/4 pomp and solos. But they nevertheless demonstrate that the essence of metal, a mode of expression it seems will be with us for as long as ordinary whiteboys hate themselves, fear girls, and are permitted to rage against a world they'll never beat, is self-obliterating volume and self-aggrandizing display. Odd licks, eerie bridges, and scat vocals abound. How much their fans identify with verses such as 'You trick-ass slut!' and 'Lemme kiss your lifeless skin' is unclear. But I'm parent enough to hope they find a more developed self-designate than someone who's idea of symbolism is netcasting softcore porn to any teenager with a login. C+"

>Chicago at Carnegie Hall [Columbia, 1971]
I'm not claiming actually to have listened to this four-record set--you think I'm a nut?--but the event is too overwhelming to ignore altogether, and Chicago is a C-minus group if ever I heard one. Anyway, the packaging offers textual support for my opinion. The shrink-wrap is so loose that many Christmas gift recipients are going to suspect their girlfriends of buying review copies. And the lack of paper sleeves inside the cardboard sleeves inside the big box means that the only way to avoid scratching these plastic documents is to put the whole shebang out on the coffee table and never touch it again. C-

>Behind The Sun [Warner Bros., 1985]

"Eric Clapton and Phil Collins are both survivors (the latter and how). Eric's drowsy singing worked fine when laid-back was commercial, but he's not retiring here, he's looking for work. For several reasons, including marketplace fashion, Collins mixes the drums very high and then due to fashion, he induces Eric to, um, project. Painful. And bad. C+"

>Chicago VI [Columbia, 1973]
Any horn band that's reduced to writing songs about critics and copping from Motown and America is, how do you say eet, running out of good press. C+

>Shout At The Devil [Elektra, 1983]
It goes without saying that this platinum product is utter dogshit even by heavy metal standards. Under orders from editors unable to distinguish Iron Maiden from Wynton Marsalis, my beleaguered colleagues at the dailies have been saying so all year and every insult goes into the press kit. Still, I must mention Mick Mars's dork-fingered guitar before getting to the one truly remarkable thing about this record, a track called "Ten Seconds To Love" in which singer Vince Neil actually boasts (!) how fast he can ejaculate. Therein I believe lies the secret of their appeal--if you don't got it, flaunt it. Follow up--"Pinkie Prick". D+

As much as Glam Metal sucks, but holy shit giving that low for SATD?

>Foreigner [Atlantic, 1977]
You've heard of Beatlemania? I propose xenophobia. C+

Literally all critics back then shit on that album. The Rolling Stone review said that SATD was disappointingly weak and almost felt like it was created by MTV's marketing department.

Just fuck you. Why do I even come here? Every single fucking post here is terrible. I'm so fucking tired of this place.

Chocolate

I mean I expect at least a C+

Every single post here is just people posting shit opinions to make other people upset. This sucks.

>Millions Now Living Will Never Die [Thrill Jockey, 1996]
Obviously not stupid, which I can understand means a lot to them after their troubled childhoods, these guys are the class of the American post-rock cough cough hack hack movement ptooey ptooey. But I would direct their attention to the British band Mark-Almond, a now forgotten jamming unit that achieved real sales and a measure of hip around the time they were born. Not that I necessarily think these "eclectic," consciously unspacy, all too unhurried soundscape improvisations are destined for the same degree of obscurity. Patterns of culture have changed, and in a boutique economy, this shit, like all other shit, is probably here to stay. Still, there are surer roads to posterity. Best moment: the lead bassline, lifted directly from "Poptones" (by PiL, kids). B-

TNT [Thrill Jockey, 1998] :(

define significance
define sucks
define prog rock

Hey fuck you, I'm enjoying these posts.

>Double Vision [Atlantic, 1979]
This isn't quite as sodden as you'd expect--these guys are pros who adapt to the times by speeding the music up. That is, until I come into contact with the dumb, conceited woman-haters doing the singing. I mean, these guys think punks are cynical and anti-life when they rhyme "science" with "appliance" while complaining that the world is all madness and lies and then claim it was intended as a joke. C+

>Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements [Elektra, 1993]
almost hooky enough to reconcile me to a world that needs Marxist background music ("Tone Burst," "I'm Going Out of My Way") ***

>Emperor Tomato Ketchup [Elektra, 1996]
So it isn't just silly punk songs--yet other people want to fill the world with silly Marxist songs, and what's wrong with that? Academia being the main place Marxism remains a cultural fact in Anglo-American culture, I say watered-down théorie is as valid as the watered-down surrealism we've always made allowances for. I also say the band's ideological tastes commit it to a measure of musical realism, preventing their postdance from doodling off into the ether. So although the obvious tunes, playful sound effects, pretty counterpoints, and mysterioso textures may--no, do--add up to pop, what they don't add up to, despite the vaunted Tortoise connection, is anything fools can pigeonhole as postrock. Songful hence no longer cool, this band will finally repay your undivided attention. A-

>Spiderland [Touch and Go, 1991]
Out of Squirrel Bait by Hunglikealbini, a Trojan horse. Extolled for their multipartite songforms and, da-da, dynamic shifts from soft to loud, as well as their intimate knowledge of mental illness, these guys look like unassuming alternative types and in real life may be same. Their sad-sack affect fits right in. But musically--structurally, as one might say--they're art-rockers without the courage of their pretensions. And if you promise not to mention their lyrics they promise to keep the volume down. C+

>Load [Elektra, 1996]
The good thing about being old is that I'm neither wired to like metal nor tempted to fake it. Just as I suspected, these Johnny-come-latelies-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss could no more do grunge than they could do double-ledger bookkeeping. So regardless of what riff neatniks think, this is just a metal album with the tempos slowed down and the song structures condensed, which is good because it tightens their sound, and bad because it invites more singing, which they can't. C+

>Loveless [Sire/Warner Bros., 1991]
If you believe the true sound of life on planet earth is now worse than bombs bursting midair or runaway trains--more in the direction of scalpel against bone, or the proverbial giant piece of chalk and accoutrements--this CD transfigures the music of our sphere. Some may cringe at the grotesque distortions they extract from their guitars, others at the soprano murmurs that provide theoretical relief. I didn't much go for either myself. But after suitable suffering and peer support, I learned. In the destructive elements immerse. A-

>Dirt [Columbia, 1992]
Crunch, crunch, crunch, thunk, thunk, thunk. Way harder, louder, and more metallic than Soundgarden will ever be. But the price of it is that it's also stupider, the sound of hopeless craving. This is a heroin album, take it or leave it--Junkhead isn't ironic and I don't believe fictional either. Somehow, as I sit here looking at my books and degrees (well, degree) I doubt if I "let myself go and opened my mind" as resident sickman Layne Staley suggests, I'd be doing, err, as well as him. I'll wait for my own man, thank you. C